Telos Journal Edition Three October 2013 | Page 19

production to include the kind of diversity that is necessary for durability both in nature
and society.
Had the players been satisfied with their mutated goods, the orchestrators would have
found ways to keep providing them, through some regurgitated or genetically modified
kind of de-qualitative compromise or semblance of resuscitating subsidization. This latter
thought we finally draw not from our game but from real world assessments. This was Mr.
Ben’s bright idea.
What else can we assess from this simple commercial experiment? For one, the
substitution of real goods for phony ones. When consumers buy food brands, twodimensional ensembles of often psychedelic slogan and advertisement, they know
what they’re getting. They’re consuming ‘Lucky Charms’, ‘Cheez-Its’ (an experience
typified by a gooey orange palette and a gassy intestinal track), ‘Washington Apples’,
‘Big Macs’, ‘Doritos Locos’, etc. We are branded consumers that somehow now eat
brands. (What does ‘notional’ mean?) Whether our products support dietetic
sustainability, sustenance that will generally lead us to advanced age is for our
practitioners to decide; we needn’t bother exercising such rights to knowledge. Stars
and stripes often speak for us; our brands provide for us. Forget about solar power and
organic entelechy; we have cool suicidal seeds and mechanized fowl.
We must assume that any brand, no matter how wholesome it once was, is subject to
exponential growth and inevitable adulteration, large or small. Honest Tea is one of the
latest and most obvious examples. Still sporting its slogan: ‘Nature Got It Right’, Honest
Tea is now completely owned by Coca-Cola and sporting a less than honest ingredient
list. Despite the infamy that sometimes comes with monetary success, which reliably
comes with greedy ambitions and hierarchical oppression—it is not incontrovertibly true
that a corporation must cheapen the quality of their products over time. Corporations
are, quite the reverse, given the best monetary shot at creating things safely with
substance and due respect for general life. Capitalists would do well to acquire a little
karmic piety on this round earth, a bit of qualitative give and take.
How far have we gone from Lao Tzu’s notion that “There is no calamity like not knowing
what is enough”? Indeed, “Only he who knows what is enough will always have
enough.” But Jim is well-nourished; Ben isn’t.

Final Thoughts
The solution to all this is diversity and equative consideration. We can apply horticultural
wisdom to contemporary economics. Real farmers know that monocultures do not yield
much food on farmland for long because crops don’t like land raped with pestilent
synthetic, organic-resistant substances. Such is life in the sphere of economics. And in
the context of our game experiment, sound success would have been maximized if the
players were left in smaller groups and thus shared a greater private responsibility.
Private: one of the most endeared and strategically propagandized words in our
vocabulary. What is effectively meant by diversity and privatization is a further
intensifying of targeting and compartmentalizing consumers and deeper—today
abysmally, shamefully, and ludicrously deep—privatization of funds. When money does
what it wants, consciousness lags instead of leads.